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Tuesday, April 3, 2012

By Patricia McBroomIt
was 2005. A group of environmentalists had just seen a
report that made their hair stand on end. Fish in the Sacramento/San
Joaquin Delta had dropped off the edge of the table; their
populations were crashing. Gathering up charts that showed fish
populations plummeting as pumping increased during the decade, the
environmentalists presented this evidence of collapse to a room full
of water exporters and officials meeting at the Sheraton Hotel in
Sacramento.

Loss of the tiny Delta smelt stopped some pumping

“There
were audible gasps,” recalled one member of the group. ”They were
pumping water (out of the Delta) like hell. They told us not to come
back with this kind of 'pseudo science'. They knew that once
knowledge (of the fish collapse) became public, they would be held
accountable. And by golly they have been.”Since
then, water contractors importing water from the Delta to the south have been forced to reduce diversions under
provisions of the Federal Endangered Species Act, an event that led
west San Joaquin farmers to post signs along Interstate 5, shouting:
“Congress Created Dust Bowl.” Contractors also set to work on the
modern version of a peripheral canal, with the purpose of taking just
as much water as in 2005, but without killing the fish.

Signs along Interstate 5 blame Endangered Species Act

It
doesn't seem to be working.

Try
as they may, water contractors can't prove that moving the point of
diversion –taking water upstream on the Sacramento River and
funneling it under the Delta through enormous tunnels – would help
the fish. On the contrary, their own analysis, released at 10,000 pages on Feb. 29, shows that the amount of water they want to take
would probably doom the species they intend to save, particularly
Delta smelt.

“It's
a challenge,” said Jerry Meral, California's deputy secretary of the Natural Resources Agency, in charge of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan
(BDCP, aka peripheral canal) “We
must improve the proposal to meet the adverse effects on key species,
but we don't know yet what alternative will work.”

That's
putting it mildly.

Last
week, a panel of the nation's top scientists weighed in on the causes
of the ecosystem/fish collapse and the scope of California's water
challenges. After two years of study, the panel from the National
Academy of Sciences (NAS) said they could not identify the main
drivers of the collapse. In other words they could not rank the most
harmful stressors in the Delta, whether pollution, dams, invasive
species, food availability, habitat loss, fish entrainment in the
pumps or amount of water pumped out. All were having an effect in a
complicated and still mysterious ecosystem.

But
in several places in the 280-page report, the scientists identified
fresh water flow as a critical variable.

“Statistical evidence and models suggest that both flows (amount of
fresh water) and flow paths (route through the Delta) are critical to
population abundance of many species in the Bay-Delta.” the panel
wrote on page 105. If California wants to maintain an ecosystem like
the one that seemed to be functional until the drought from 1986 to
'93, the report said, “then exports of all types will necessarily
need to be limited in dry years.”

Vast Sierra watershed nourishes all living beings in California

Few
issues in the current water wars are more contentious than the amount
of fresh water that is allowed to flow from the Delta watershed in
the high Sierras to the Pacific Ocean. Those who want higher flows
(environmentalists and Delta advocates) like to taunt water importers by saying they are “trying to save the fish by removing them from
the water.”

Water
contractors respond that fresh water flowing into the ocean is
“wasted.” Environmentalists, they say, are ignoring all the
other causes of estuary degradation; flow is no more important than
other stressors. The NAS scientists were unable to resolve the
controversy, saying only that “it's up to the State to insure that
necessary in stream flow levels are maintained” (p. 178)

This
was not the result water importers hoped for when they encouraged the
U.S. Congress to enlist the help of Academy scientists in finding
some alternative to water cutbacks. Throughout the years since 2005, importers south of the Delta have done everything they could to shift
attention away from the water they were pumping to other kinds of
stressors on the system. It's the invasive fish species. No, it's
the ammonia from Sacramento sewage plants. No, really, it's the
location of the State water pumps on the San Joaquin River near
Tracy, where the power of the engines makes the river flow backwards
and chews up all the juvenile fish which otherwise would reach
maturity in the relative security of the Sacramento River.

Unfortunately,
it's all of them and more. And above all else looms the special
impact of drought.

New Carquinez Bridge over a narrow strait, through
which Delta water exits to the San Francisco Bay.Credit: Patricia McBroom

In
its natural condition, unimpeded by human water diversions to the
north and south of California's Delta, this great watershed would
send down some 40 million acre feet (MAF) from the Sierras to the
ocean in an average year (acre foot = one acre covered to a depth
of one foot). The water would oftentimes bury the Central Valley in
floods and crash through a narrow channel, called the Carquinez
Strait, in the Coastal Range. All but separated from the San
Francisco Bay and bounded by highlands, the water does not fan out in
a wide ocean-side Delta, as do other freshwater estuaries. Rather,
it is one of only two “inverted” deltas in the world (the other
is in Portugal), where the unique geography leads to a buildup of
sediments – in this case peat soils – on the inland side and
gives rise to rare opportunities for water engineering
infrastructure. California's Delta is one of the most modified in
the world.

In
average years, diverters north and south remove about 50 percent of
the flow to
serve 25 million people and millions of acres of agricultural land.
(The watershed itself produces about half the fresh water in the
State.) No one knows for sure if this rate of removal is too high
for the ecosystem; there seems to be no evident threshold below which
there are irreversible declines. But the NAS scientists were
unequivocal about drought. “It is clear that very dry periods can
alter species composition in more permanent ways.” they wrote.

To
build a peripheral canal, supporters of the BDCP will need guidelines
on how much water they can divert from the Sacramento River. The
agency burdened with providing those guidelines by balancing human
and ecological needs in the Delta is the State Water Resources
Control Board (SWRCB) or simply the “water board”. Those
decisions, however, are two years away, leaving all combatants in the
water wars wondering how the water board will come to terms with the
clashing needs of ecology and human use. How will they balance
economic needs, political pressure, urban use and the public trust,
especially in light of the lack of scientific certainty?

The
board has already decided, in a public trust document
published in 2010, that the
ecosystem and fish, if considered alone, need 75 percent of unimpeded
flow from the Sacramento River (compared to the current 50%). Such
numbers make water diverters everywhere blanch. “It scares us to
death!” said Tib Belza of the Yuba County Water Agency at a recent
north state water forum.

But the final number reached by the board is sure to be less than
75%; how much less, nobody knows until the board completes its
balancing act.There is, in short, no easy way
forward, considering the single-minded focus of major water diverters
– the Metropolitan Water District in Los Angeles and Westlands
Water District in the San Joaquin Valley – on a mammoth peripheral
canal.

PLC's Jonas Minton

Which
brings us to California's moment of Zen: focus on what is squarely in
front of the eyes and take the next step. That's what combatants in the water wars have decided to do in forming
a new coalition to move forward on important, near-term projects for
the Delta that everyone can agree upon.

Responding to a call from Jonas Minton of the Planning and Conservation League, water warriors have signed their names to the cooperative venture which meets for the first time April 4 in Sacramento to talk about what
they might do now – together – while they battle over future
distributions of water. The group includes representatives from
Metropolitan and Westlands, along with environmentalists and Delta
supporters, who have been at odds for years.

“This
is not a substitute for any long term, future plans,” Minton
emphasized. “In no way
is this to interfere with the outcome or preclude any outcomes from
the BDCP or the Delta Stewardship Council or the Delta Plan or
anything else.”

Minton
said the coalition might decide upon strengthening the levees, or
creating more habitat in the Yolo Bypass, or getting rid of invasive
weeds in the Delta channels.

Imagine. Action rather than words. And maybe the first step toward
rebuilding trust.

About Me

Journalist/anthropologist; author of two books, former science and magazine writer with the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Published "The Third Sex," on women adapting to formerly all-male career roles in the financial districts of New York and San Francisco in 1986 with wide reviews.
As professor, taught courses on women and work at UC Berkeley, Mills College, Rutgers University and Diablo Valley College. Affiliated with the California Studies Association at UC Berkeley.